Electronic systems and circuits have made a significant contribution towards the advancement of modern society and are utilized in a number of applications to achieve advantageous results. Numerous electronic technologies such as digital computers, calculators, audio devices, video equipment, and telephone systems have facilitated increased productivity and reduced costs in analyzing and communicating data, ideas and trends in most areas of business, science, education and entertainment. Frequently, these advantageous results are realized through the use of digital video presentations. The digital video presentations typically provide information in a format that humans find easy to observe and digest significant amounts of data in relatively short periods of time. Some traditional approaches to information communication subscribe to the notion that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. However, digital video presentations are typically data intensive. Communicating large amounts of data between components of a digital video system can consume significant resources and take a significant amount of time.
Rapid communication and processing of information is often critical for desirable video presentations. Generally, a certain level of flow or speed in the information presentation is required for the application to perform properly. Delays in communicating and/or processing video information can have significant detrimental impacts on video presentations. Glitches or delays in video streaming can diminish user experience and/or interaction with the video.
Digital video information typically includes information associated with a three dimensional scene in the world coordinate system mapped for two dimensional projection (e.g., on a display screen). In most digital video systems an image is represented as a raster (an array) of logical picture elements (pixels). Parameter values are typically assigned to each pixel and the parameter values determine the nature of the projection on the display screen. The parameter values are digital values corresponding to certain attributes of the image (e.g. color, depth, etc.) measured over a small area of the image represented by a pixel. The parameter values are usually represented by bits associated with binary logic values (e.g., a string of ones and zeroes) that are communicated between components of a system. Typically each graphical image is represented by thousands of combined pixels. Communicating information for each pixel is very data intensive and typically consumes a significant amount of the communication resources in a digital video system.
Communication resources in video systems typically have physical constraints that place upper limits on communication bandwidth (e.g., the amount of information that can be communicated in a predetermined amount of time). For example, the amount of digital information (e.g., bits per second, bytes per second, etc.) that can be communicated on the number of paths or channels in a communications bus usually has an upper limit. Traditional attempts at increasing bandwidth can include increasing the physical resources of the system. However, increasing the physical resources of a system is often expensive and can detrimentally impact other desirable features of a system. For example, the amount of physical resources that are included as part of a mobile system (e.g., laptops, hand held devices, cell phones, etc.) is often limited by size and/or weight constraints directed to maintaining mobility.